Escape (A House of Hades fanfic)

Chapter I (Percy)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this book. All rights go to Rick Rordan.

Falling...

All around us the blackness swirled, filled with the screaming of tormented souls. I pulled Annabeth closer to me and looked into her fear-filled eyes. "You're such a Seaweed Brain! You should have just let me fall! Why didn't you let me fall...oh Percy...." she screamed over the wind, breaking off into sobs as she neared the end of her sentence, and buried her head in my chest.

"I could never do that. I love you." I explained. She looked at me with a completely shocked expression on her face. "I love you so much and there's no way that I'm ever letting you face this alone. We were already separated for eight months by Hera, and then you had to go off by yourself to find the Athena Parthenos. I am never letting you go again."

"I love you too, Percy," she said softly. "So much more than you can imagine." Just then I looked up to see tons of debris hurtling straight towards us. The rest of the parking lot must have collapsed after we fell. Immediately, I shifted so that I was above Annabeth, protecting her from injury. Pain exploded in my shoulder as a Lamborghini slammed into me. Annabeth screamed at me to stop being a martyr, but I refused. She had already suffered enough. In Rome, she had left the group and gone single-handedly to face her worst fears and retrieve the Athena Parthenos alone, despite a badly broken ankle.

As we fell, Annabeth slipped into unconsciousness, the rope's tug on her ankle agonizingly painful, and by the time the debris stopped falling, I was pretty close to blacking out myself. My entire body felt like it was on fire and my vision was tinted red, but the worst part was the guilt.

It was my fault she was down here in the first place. I should have been able to pull her up or catch her before she fell. I was supposed to be the hero of Olympus, but I wasn't even strong enough to stop my girlfriend from falling into Tartarus. Everyone always looked up to me as the brave, confident guy, the role model, but they didn't know I was really terrified to let them down. Oh gods, my friends.... I wondered how they were handling this.

I imagined their reactions as they witnessed our fall into Tartarus. Nico, staring at the abyss in pure shock, Piper full of sadness at the loss of Annabeth. They had grown pretty close while I was gone. Hazel probably felt useless, for not being capable of stopping our plunge even with all her fancy underworld powers. There was a good chance Frank was killing himself over being so caught up in the statue that he didn't notice us fall in time. Jason would be blaming himself for not saving us. I knew that feeling. And Leo... well, I really didn't know the guy. I should have payed more attention to him, but with all that was going on...

I decided I was going to sit down and seriously talk to the guy if Annabeth and I ever got out of here. No. I forced myself not to think like that. We had to make it through Tartarus and close the Doors of Death. I sure as hell was not letting Annabeth die down here. I would protect her even if kills me

Ugh.... stupid ADHD. I needed to figure out what was going to happen when we hit the bottom or if there even was a bottom. "Annabeth!" I called, shaking her shoulders. "Wake up!"

She slowly regained consciousness "What," she said, annoyed.

"When do you think we'll hit the bottom.... or is there no bottom?" I said, wincing from the pain in my ribs.

"Percy..." Her tone was laced with warning.

"I'm fine. It's not that bad," I lied. The pain was unbearable, but I didn't want her worried. "How's your ankle feeling?"

"Percy... I know you're lying. Tell me the truth." Annabeth

"Only if you tell me how your ankle feels," I countered.

"You are impossible! My ankle hurts but I'll live. Now tell me how badly you're injured."

With each breath my ribs throbbed and I could feel the blood trickling down my back. My shoulder felt like someone stabbed it with a white hot iron, but if I told her that, she would panic. "It looks a lot worse than it is. It barely hurts," I told her so she wouldn't worry. She still looked dubious but accepted that she wasn't getting a more forthcoming answer.

I glanced down and saw the ground rushing towards us. Oh crap. I couldn't let Annabeth hit the ground first. I made a split-second decision and shifted under Annabeth so that I would take the brunt of the impact.

When we hit the ground, all I felt was agony like someone had forced a vial of Greek fire down my throat, and it was burning me from the inside out. I tried to fight it, but eventually the pain won, and blackness consumed my vision. Man, I get knocked out a lot. Almost as much as Jason.

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Hi, it's Roza here. Hope you all like my story, any comments would be much appreciated.